Justice James Kolawole Omotosho of the Federal High Court in Abuja has ordered the Nigeria Police and the Department of State Services (DSS) to investigate a court registrar and a defendant over alleged tampering with evidence in an ongoing N10 billion fraud trial. The judge said the investigation followed serious concerns about the destruction of key exhibits already tendered before the court.
The exhibits were submitted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to support fraud charges against Ali Bello, Chief of Staff to the Kogi State Governor. During proceedings, Justice Omotosho revealed that the court registrar, Nasiru Onimisi Zubairu, admitted that one of the defendants, Daudu Sulaiman, persuaded him to delete important WhatsApp messages from a phone kept as court evidence, allegedly in exchange for the promise of a house.
The judge openly played the registrar’s confession in court, stressing that the Federal High Court has zero tolerance for such conduct. An EFCC investigator later confirmed that several WhatsApp chats between 2020 and 2022, including messages allegedly referencing large sums of money, had indeed been deleted from the phone. The registrar told the court he could not remember exactly which chats he deleted.
Following the revelation, the prosecution requested a full investigation and forensic analysis of the phone, warning that crucial evidence may have been compromised. Although defence lawyers urged the court to wait for investigation results, Justice Omotosho ordered the police and DSS to immediately probe the matter and adjourned the trial to February 9, 2026.
